Under the macro background of the in-depth implementation of Made-in-China 2025, together with the 36-day "Lightning Meeting" of Foxconn Industrial Internet Co., Ltd., the hot topic of "Industrial Internet" has increased sharply recently. Internet giants and leading manufacturers have entered the industrial Internet industry one after another. As the basis of intelligent manufacturing, the construction of industrial Internet needs to widely use microelectronic products, such as processors, sensors, microcontrollers and communication chips. Its development will inevitably bring new market opportunities to the semiconductor industry. For the relatively weak Chinese industrial semiconductor industry, we should not miss this outlet.
Industrial Internet is a new outlet
Made-in-China 2025 is expected to achieve the goal of internal intelligence through intelligent manufacturing and intelligent chemical plants. Industrial Internet is at the core of intelligent manufacturing, and it is also one of the keys and grasps to implement Made-in-China 2025. In recent years, with the advance of "Made in China 2025" development plan, the role of industrial Internet has become increasingly prominent. More and more enterprises begin to realize the importance of industrial Internet and its development prospects. Especially in November last year, the State Council issued the "guiding opinions on deepening the development of the" Internet + Advanced Manufacturing "industry internet. From start-up companies to technology giants, more and more enterprises began to pour into the industrial Internet field.
At the World Mobile Communications Conference held in Barcelona, Aliyun launched the "ET Industrial Brain", which combines AI technology, cloud computing, big data and industry knowledge in vertical fields. It can help manufacturing enterprises to improve the quality rate and forecast the failure rate, and solve the problems faced in manufacturing. Recently, Ziguang Group integrated its Ziguang Yunshu Technology Co., Ltd. with Xinhua Group 3 to set up Ziguang Yunshu Engine Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. to launch solutions for industrial Internet. Foxconn Industrial Internet Co., Ltd. also hopes to achieve data acquisition and cloud computing technology by connecting smart sensors with production equipment, while improving efficiency, reducing costs and saving, laying the technical foundation for business expansion.
The core of industrial Internet is to integrate data acquisition and analysis, knowledge application and dissemination and sharing capabilities in the platform system, to help flexible supply of manufacturing resources, efficient allocation, and greatly improve production efficiency. Because of the technology involved in automatic robots, Internet of Things and large data analysis, semiconductor products are widely used in industrial manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and even in product design process transformation, which also brings new opportunities to the industrial semiconductor industry. According to the forecast of Market Research Institute HIS, the industrial semiconductor market will grow at an annual compound growth rate of 8% from 2014 to 2019, and its market value will reach 59.5 billion US dollars in 2019.
Domestic chips are mostly in the middle and low-end market
Faced with the opportunity of industrial Internet, semiconductor companies have joined the market competition. According to Semicast Research, TI is still the world's largest manufacturer of industrial semiconductors, consolidating its dominance in the field of industrial semiconductors after acquiring the US National Semiconductor. In 2017, analog chip giant ADI acquired Linear for $14.8 billion, and the market capitalization of the two companies was close to $30 billion, making ADI an industrial semiconductor manufacturer second only to Texas Instruments. After the acquisition, ADI can master a set of multi-protocol Industrial Ethernet solutions, and add key supporting technologies to the product portfolio of ADI intelligent automation solutions for industrial automation and industrial Internet of Things.
Chinese IC manufacturers are also actively developing the industrial semiconductor market, but at present there is no strong group competitiveness. Semiconductor expert Tang Xiaoquan said in an interview that processors, sensors, microcontrollers, communication chips and power semiconductors can all be used in the industrial field, and now Chinese IC companies can also develop and produce these products. But most of the products are still concentrated in the middle and low-end market.
In the Emicast Research report, analog IC is one of the main product types of industrial semiconductors, and many or even dozens of analog IC will be used in every electronic motor product. However, due to the monopoly of Texas Instruments, Italian Semiconductor, Infineon, En Zhipu, ADI and other giants, China's local analog IC manufacturers can only survive.
Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Trend
However, with the rise of China's industrial Internet, the development of industrial semiconductor industry has brought new opportunities. Local enterprises can give full play to the advantages of close to customers, rapid response and localized services. Yu Shaohua, Vice President of Wuhan Institute of Posts and Telecommunications Science, pointed out that the industrial Internet can be understood from three levels: "First, to form a network of integrated production, supply and marketing of factories; second, the intelligent development of manufacturing industry promotes new formats, new modes and new ecology; and third, the global intelligent manufacturing." Semiconductor products should conform to these trends, and develop data sensing, transmission, analysis and other products needed by customers, so as to gain more market opportunities.
Tang Xiaoquan analyzed the development direction and characteristics of the industrial Internet to reporters, and the development of industrial semiconductors should also focus on these aspects.
Firstly, the basic network of high-speed transmission, large data and real-time security is crucial to the development of industrial Internet services. However, the industrial Ethernet standards supported by different manufacturers are different. This requires the development of communication chips supporting multi-protocol. Of course, the implementation of Ethernet protocol should be considered in the development process.